DataWind
 | |
| Industry | Computers |
|---|---|
| Founded | Montreal, Canada |
| Headquarters | London Amritsar, India Dallas,Texas Mississauga, Ontario. |
| Key people | Suneet Tuli, CEO Raja Tuli, Co-founder David Elder,COO |
| Products | Aakash tablet Ubislate 7 PocketSurfer Pocketsurfer2 Pocketsurfer3 |
| Website | www.datawind.com |
DataWind is a company manufacturing and marketing wireless web access products, originally founded in Montreal in 2001 by brothers Suneet and Raja Tuli from the Indian state of Punjab. Now headquartered in London, the company also has offices in Amritsar, India; Dallas,Texas; and Mississauga, Ontario.
With its research and development based in Montreal, the company until 2010 marketed its production primarily in the UK, where it is registered as an LLC. In 2004, the company was described as a "small tech shop" marketing its key product, the Pocketsurfer, a pda/cell phone/web browser device. Several iterations of the Pocketsurfer followed.
Datawind is now widely known for its development of the Aakash, an inexpensive tablet computer developed in conjunction with India's Minister for Human Resource Development (MHRD) and now seen as a way for the country to leapfrog the problems of educating its large population. Following a development process beset by delays and setbacks, the tablet will be offered at a sufficiently low price threshold – distributed by the government to students at a subsized price of $35 and to the public (as the Ubislate 7) for $60 – to enable ubiquitous, nationwide internet use. At the subsidized price, the tablet will cost about the price of a pair of shoes or a basic cell phone.
Aakash tablet
In 2010 the company won an Indian government tender to design the Aakash tablet computer – now under manufacture by the Indian company, Quad, in an initial trial run of 100,000 units. The Wall Street Journal called the Aakash, "the world's cheapest tablet."
The seven-inch touch-screen tablet was co-developed with Datawind and Indian Institute of Technology Rajasthan as part of the country's aim to link 25,000 colleges and 400 universities in an e-learning program with an ultimate production goal of tens of millions of units. Datawind projects the Indian government will buy 8 million to 10 million devices by early 2012. Time Magazine reported in 2011 that Datawind is considering marketing tailored variants of the Aakash in the U.K., the U.S. and Latin America.
In a 2011 interview, the company said it lowered the price of the tablet by developing patents to shift the device's processing burden to "backend servers in the cloud," by eliminating middle men whenever possible (DataWind itself designed the Aakash's boards, integrated components in-house and made the device's touch panel), and by monetizing the operating system – that is, selling apps for the device through its own app store. Despite using the Android operating system, the device does not have access to the Android Market.
Future
ITPro India and other sources report that Datawind is co-developing with Reliance Industries to the world’s least expensive 4G-enabled tablet.
Following the announcement of the Aakash, Datawind met with Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.
See also
References
External links
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